You Are Very Richmond If ...

A 25th anniversary revival of the reader contest you made famous.

Nine years ago, to the delight of some and the disappointment of many, Style Weekly did a very un-Richmond like thing: We put an end to an annual tradition.

Since 1985, our “You Are Very Richmond If…” contest offered readers the chance to pinpoint the curiosities, contradictions, intense pride and neurotic self-consciousness of the born-heres and come-heres living in this unique Southern city.

For the next 17 years, the issue tapped into what it meant to understand the idiosyncrasies and inside jokes of this place and its people. The humor ranged from self-deprecating to touching, but it always made a statement.

Even entries about the contest itself reflected Richmond's, uh, issues with change. You could be Very Richmond … if you waited 17 years to actually submit an entry, as Tom Benedetti penned, or … if you send in an entry next year, as Bill Ernst wrote in our farewell issue of the contest. Procrastinators and habitualists both are we.

We decided to check in with you again — just one more time — to mark the 25th anniversary of this contest's beginnings. To see what memories would be triggered, what new points of view may have formed since we last left things. Hundreds of entries were submitted. And if you are Very Richmond, you'll quickly realize that perhaps little has changed about the way we see ourselves. And of course, isn't that what can be the most frustrating — and comfortable — thing about living here?

You are aware that we are right on the sweet-tea Mason Dixon Line.— Kamen Gordon

You consider anyone north of Ashland to be a Yankee. — Kerri Pritchard

You have an “Every Month is Confederate History Month” bumper sticker on your Camaro. — Leo Rohr

You know that the three hardest things to find in Richmond are 1) affordable housing, 2) convenient parking, 3) witnesses. — James Seay

You think crossing the river means going out of town. — Dorothy Holt

You judge a man not by the color of his skin, but by the content of his tattoos.— Andy Hollins

Social Studies

You wear shorts and flip-flops in 32-degree weather because it is “supposed to be” spring.— Bill Barrett

An ex-boyfriend waits on you at every bar in town. — Susan Howson

You bemoan traveling to Short Pump because it sits outside of your five-mile sphere of influence. — Juliette Highland

You ask the host of a barbecue about the dress code. — Krittika Onsanit

You consider it socially acceptable to get so drunk that you vomit in public, as long as it only happens at the Strawberry Hill Races. — Laura Ashley Floyd

You and your friends decide to get limeade-drunk on a Saturday afternoon, and no one asks where. — Kevin Seay

You have had your picture taken with Hugh Gouldthorpe at a charity event!— Barry Hofheimer

You promise yourself every year that this is your last Watermelon Festival.— Susan Howson

You are divorced but would like to be divorced again someday. — James Seay

Your idea of a great getaway is for you and all your neighbors to rent adjoining houses in Nag's Head. — Paula Margolis

You know exactly where to find “the block party” on Hanover every Halloween.— Lisa Ann Setchel

Seeing a dog on Easter wearing a pink bonnet, slippers, and a frilly tutu seems normal — John Butt

You met your mate at Jumpin'.— Suzanne Hall

You rarely (if ever) went to a Richmond Braves game, but already have tickets to see the Flying Squirrels. — Bill Smith

Your dog has a more active social life than you.— Marny Hackley

The Upper Crust

You pay more for your children's elementary education than for their college education. — Trish Lambert

You think that Twitter is something that only happens South of the James. — Jose Simbulan

You bemoan the technological disconnect of today's youth while secretly following every @genecoxnbc12 tweet. — Leo Rohr

You spend a lot of money to make your house look tacky for Christmas. — James Seay

You meet someone for the first time but through Richmond's three degrees of separation, you discover you know each other anyway ... because your mothers were hall-mates in college, your ex-husbands were fraternity brothers at the university, and you both babysat for the same family when you were 14. — Sarah Paxton

You knew Tinsley (Mercer) Mortimer when she had a different nose.— Patricia Lambert

The Memories

Your phone number begins with Elgin 8.— Cindy Jez

Your grandparents told you stories about alligators living in the Jefferson Hotel. — Shaun Amanda Herrmann

You remember when you could actually take your family to picnic at Bryan Park. — Brian Vaughan

You, your children and their children all took cotillion with the same woman.— Nancy Riddlemoser

You knew who the Mayor of Two Street was (“The Deuce”) before the founders of Foursquare were out of diapers.— John Sarvay

You refer to visiting Hollywood Cemetery as “going to see your relatives.”— Berkley McDaniel

Eddie Weaver ever sang “Happy Birthday” to you. — Susan Wagner

You can recite Agee's Bicycles radio commercial theme song at the drop of a hat. — Trevor Butler

You sponsored one of the original cobblestones in Shockoe Slip.— Charles Jones

You know that ironically, Open Door Christian School was always the first to close on snow days. — Whitney Beadles

Inferiority Complex

Every time you see a UPS, Geico or Maytag ad, you find some way to turn the conversation to Richmond — even though everyone in the room has already had this conversation. — Robin Pritchard

You brag to your friends in New York City because a national publication named Richmond the best at something, even if the statistic ends with “per capita” or “in the South” or “among midsized cities.”— Mark Schairbaum

You tell all your friends in Portland and New York that Richmond is PBR's favorite city. — Aaron Roth

More on Ukrop's

You were one of 57,638 people who have submitted an entry lamenting the sale of Ukrop's. — Tom Foster

You think we will have a Ukrop's Museum before we have a Slavery Museum. — Victor Gottlieb

Your favorite grocery store closes and you rewrite a 1980s power ballad to show your feelings. — Andrew Vehorn

You look nervously around to make certain no one sees you entering Martin's on a Sunday and then again when paying for the six-pack of sin juice you found in the store's new heathen department. — Shawn Loehr

You have already started saving those paper grocery bags from Ukrop's because you know they are collector's items. — Mary Eovino

The End

You were born in a hospital at Lombardy and Monument avenues. Now you're thinking about retiring there for your twilight years and wonder if you can buy the condo unit which contains the room you started out in. — Alison Seaborn

You have known all your life that your last Richmond address would be in Hollywood where you will live forever.— David B. Robinson

You were wondering what happened to your entries from the past eight years. — Annette Ernst

You love Richmond as it is, but complain how it could be better. — Emily Griffey

Despite opportunities and the possibilities of other places, despite everything, you choose to stay here because in the end, Richmond is all you really need. — Mariane Jorgenson

When you were there, you couldn't wait to leave. Now that you're gone, you miss it like crazy. — Whitney Beadles

Victor's Last Stand

One of Very Richmond's most loyal and prolific entrants, Victor Gottlieb, gets one more crack at the contest.

You Are Very Richmond If … You contributed money to help reopen the rest stops and one of the toilets is going to have your name plaque attached and you traded away a noble, Native American sculpture for a Flying Squirrel and somehow, you think that's progress and nine years ago you buried some “Very Richmond If” entries in a time capsule and when you dug them up they still were not funny and you trained your bladder to expect closed rest stops and now that they have reopened, you can't go and you are telling your tearful children that Connecticut “missed his mommy and went home” and you insist that you are going to remain loyal to Ukrop's, but you don't know what that means and you sold your soul to the devil for a table at the Taste of China restaurant and you sell hot dogs at The Diamond and when you throw one to a customer, it looks just like a flying squirrel and you think it's only a matter of time before they are selling Frying Squirrels at The Diamond and you like the name “Flying Squirrels” about as much as you like the new health care bill and you promised yourself that you would not cry when Ukrop's closed and you lied and you think Style Weekly is replacing the short-story contest with this contest because they tired of reading about gumshoe detectives from outer space and their three-headed sidekicks and next year, for Christmas, you want a snowplow and you think Ukrop's would have survived if you had asked for paper bags instead of plastic and you would have to slow down in order to comply with a 70 mph speed limit and you know that Connecticut is in Virginia and you know that it's only a matter of time before the meals tax costs more than the meal itself and you think Richbrau could have survived by brewing ethanol and you want an iPad but you're going to wait until it has an app for avoiding potholes and it took you nine years to kick the “Very Richmond If” habit and now you're going to have to start ALL OVER AGAIN.

You Are Very Richmond If … you love to look back.

Here are the winning entries from the contest's 17-year (now 18-year) run.

1985At a party, you drink Virginia Gentleman and ask unfamiliar guests who their mothers were before they got married.— D. Mark W. Kemp

1986You give your daughter two last names for her first name, then end up calling her something like Mun Bun.— Elaine J. Lidholm

1987You apologize to out-of-town guests for what they've done to The Jefferson.— Phil R. Phelps

2001You send in a “You Are Very Richmond If…” entry next year.— Bill Ernst

2010 Winners

Mark SchairbaumYou can't get much more Very Richmond than spending spare time writing Wikipedia articles about the place. (Someone has to.) When Mark Schairbaum moved here in 1999, he took up Richmond as a kind of hobby. It started after his graduation from the University of Michigan with a degree in mathematics. While his friends moved to New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, he moved here. “And I felt like I needed to compete with them,” he says. “So I was constantly looking for reasons why Richmond was a world-class city as well. And I think I found them.” He just celebrated his 33rd birthday — where else — at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts' grand opening. Schairbaum works as an operations research analyst for the U.S. Army at Fort Lee. He attends church at West End Assembly of God, plays folk music with the Park Avenue Players and might be spotted with a Frisbee, basketball or tennis racquet around the Fan. Speaking of tennis, there's his winning entry, which taps into the visual contrast, sensitive undertones and generally under-discussed issues that surround a statue of Arthur Ashe on Monument Avenue. With the $250 he wins here, he says he's considering throwing a Very Richmond party.

Lesley BrunoRunning and smoking. “I thought it was one of Richmond's charming quirks,” Lesley Bruno says of the city's dual appreciation for fitness and tobacco-related recreation. Perhaps she's done a little of both herself, she says, but it really struck her recently after the Monument Avenue 10K, spotting her husband and some friends after they'd run the race, hanging out at brunch in their running gear, taking a puff or two. Bruno knows Richmond well, having lived here since she was 6. She grew up in the South Side, where her childhood memories include her and her sister, Susan Howson, getting wrapped in life jackets by their dad and being sent down the rapids at Pony Pasture. (They survived!) She lives in the Museum District, cites Hollywood Cemetery as one of her favorite local spots, and works as director of public relations and marketing for the Valentine Richmond History Center — headquarters for Very Richmond everything.

Annette ErnstOriginally from Brecksville, Ohio, Annette Ernst has lived here since 1976. Coincidentally, her husband, William J. Ernst III, wrote the winning entry in the last “Very Richmond” contest in 2001. “We did a lot of these together in our heads,” she says. They live on the South Side near Forest Hill Park, proudly. “We've always lived in the city, raised our kids in the city,” she says. Their children are grown, 28 and 26, and she's retired as an occupational therapist from what is now VCU Health Systems, picking up work here and there for HCA. It leaves her more time to volunteer with Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden. “Moving to Virginia was my first time moving to the South,” she says, and she can't imagine living anywhere else: “I'd miss the crazy mocking birds, and the magnolia trees and the boxwood.”

We make sense of the news; pursue those in power; explore the city's arts and culture; open windows on provocative ideas; and help readers know Richmond through its people. We give readers the information to make intelligent decisions.